Author: Lisa Provence

In little more than six hours, a Nelson County jury found Randy Allen Taylor guilty of abduction with intent to defile and first-degree murder in the commission of an abduction for the death of 17-year-old Alexis Murphy, who disappeared August 3 and whose body has not been found.

A grim-looking jury that avoided looking at a somber Taylor filed back into the courtroom shortly before 4pm. Judge Michael Gamble read the two guilty verdicts.

“It has been a living hell for us,” said Laura Murphy, Alexis’ mother, during the sentencing portion of the hearing. “If [Taylor] were in my shoes, how would he feel?” She recounted that her daughter missed her “most important year”—her senior year in high school—and will not get her diploma next week on May 17, before breaking down in sobs.

At that point, Taylor’s court-appointed attorney, Michael Hallahan stood up and said to the judge, “Mr. Taylor requests not to be present in court.” Taylor rushed to the exit with deputies behind him.

Before the jury went to decide on a verdict, which ranged from minimum of 20 years to life for each count, Commonwealth’s Attorney Anthony Martin read Taylor’s criminal history: convictions for arson, fraud, and conspiracy to commit fraud in Albemarle in 2004; burglary and grand larceny in Virginia Beach in 1993; felony hit and run reduced to a misdemeanor in 2012 in Greene County, and grand larceny reduced to a misdemeanor in 2013 in Greene.

What Martin did not tell the jury was that Taylor was the suspect in the 2010 disappearance of Samantha Clarke, 19, in Orange. Clarke’s body has never been found. Orange Detective Evans Oakerson, who had investigated the Clarke disappearance, was in the Lovingston courtroom.

Before the jury went back to recommend a sentence, Martin reminded the jurors of the police interviews with Taylor they’d heard during trial. “In the interviews the defendant showed no empathy, no remorse,” he said. “He took a young life and threw it away.” Martin asked for a life sentence for both charges.

With Taylor absent from the courtroom, his attorney told the jury that Taylor would turn 49 next month and that the minimum sentence of 40 years would amount to a life sentence.

The jury took fewer than 30 minutes to come back with a recommendation of life in prison on both counts. Taylor will be formally sentenced July 23.

After court was in recess, Laura Murphy hugged Nelson Sheriff’s Office investigator Billy Mays, before Murphy’s family, friends, investigators in the case, and Martin held a brief press conference in front of the courthouse. Martin said the jury had “put a dangerous man in jail.”

Hearing the verdict “was like winning the lottery,” said family spokesperson Trina Murphy, Alexis’ great aunt. “It was justice being served.”

She did not mince words about Taylor’s abrupt departure from the courtroom: “Cowards always run,” she said, and she acknowledged that the verdict didn’t bring the closure the family needs because Alexis is still missing. She commended the jury: “I’m confident they made the right decision.”

Both the prosecution and the defense rested their cases on May 7 in the trial of Randy Allen Taylor, 48, charged with the murder and abduction of Alexis Taylor, who was last seen with Taylor at the Liberty gas station in Lovingston on August 3. After closing arguments, during which both sides agreed on only one thing—that Taylor was a liar—the case went to the jury at the end of the day.

“Randy Taylor is not charged with lying to the police or smoking marijuana or driving on a suspended license,” said Taylor’s lawyer, Michael Hallahan. “Taylor lied to investigators repeatedly. You can suspect he’s guilty of something, but that’s not beyond reasonable doubt.”

Taylor is charged with first-degree murder, first-degree murder during the commission of an abduction, and abduction with intent to defile.

The day began with prosecution witness Wayne Ray Buraker, a self-described habitual offender who was in Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail in August, soon after Taylor arrived there. Dressed in inmate black-and-white stripes, Buraker said he was in a cell beside Taylor on August 16 and 17—less than a week after Taylor’s arrest. He asked his new cell neighbor about Murphy and claimed the defendant replied, “The first time I saw her, I wanted to f*ck her my way.”

Buraker also said he’d seen Taylor on Nancy Grace’s television show and denied law enforcement had encouraged him to talk to Taylor.

Defense attorney Hallahan, scoffed, “You’re probably pretty proud to be able to accomplish what hundreds of FBI agents couldn’t after you just met him.”

The prosecution also called to the stand Louise Turner, who is the mother of Taylor’s son and whose mother owns the property on U.S. 29 north of Lovingston where Taylor lived in a 1956 camper that he had restored. Turner confirmed that their son, 14, had been with her the weekend Alexis Murphy disappeared.

Nelson Sheriff’s Office investigator Billy Mays confirmed he had checked out the story of Dameon Bradley, the man Taylor had fingered as being with Murphy in his camper the night she disappeared, drinking beer and smoking marijuana. Bradley testified that he’d never been to Taylor’s camper, and had been with his girlfriend in a motel in Madison Heights when Murphy disappeared.

Mays also said he had participated in at least 20 searches to find Murphy.

The defense produced 11 witnesses in little more than an hour, including Lisa Woodfolk, who works for Charlottesville Parking Center and who claimed she’d seen both Murphy and Taylor park in a downtown Charlottesville garage in separate cars, but she couldn’t recall the date. She also said she’d seen a burgundy Chrysler drive down Garrett Street. Taylor has alleged that Murphy left his camper with a man with cornrows who drove a maroon Chevy Caprice.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Martin related previous testimony from an FBI agent who said he spent more than 24 hours viewing parking garage surveillance video from that location and saw no camouflaged Suburban, which is what Taylor drove, nor the white Nissan Maxima Murphy was driving.

“They’re lying,” said Woodfolk.

“You want your 15 minutes of fame?” Martin asked Woodfolk.

Other defense witnesses included two women who testified they’d seen someone who looked like Murphy walk across the parking lot at the Food Lion in Lovingston with another young woman around 8:30pm on August 3. Kristina Robertson said she knew the time because she had a Food Lion receipt, but said it would be difficult to identify the woman as Murphy. “I never saw her face,” said Robertson.

Murphy’s best friend, Malaysia Page, admitted Murphy smoked marijuana, but said it was infrequently. Murphy had thousands of followers on Twitter, said Page, and she projected the persona of “a party girl,” but in person was not that way.

By the time closing arguments began at nearly 4pm, the historic Nelson County Circuit Court was packed with Murphy’s family, friends, and law enforcement, many of whom had been released as witnesses.

“When it comes down to it, only two people know what happened in that camper Saturday, August 3, between 7:17 and 7:30,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Martin. “One of them is here—the defendant Randy Taylor. The other has been silenced.”

He referred to the testimony of family and friends who said the rising senior at Nelson County High and volleyball co-captain had just gotten a raise at her job at Kid to Kid, was happy with her life and looking at going to college.

“All of that changed when she walked across the parking lot of the Liberty gas station and that man held the door for her,” said Martin, who wasted no words accusing Taylor of lying to investigators. “He thought he could fast talk his way out of it,” said Martin. “Then he tried the oldest trick in the book—blame it on someone else. He drags in poor Dameon Bradley.”

Martin admitted he didn’t know why Murphy went to Taylor’s camper and said it could have been drugs, which he called “abduction by deception.” Taylor said in interview tapes that Murphy came to his house with the cornrows-wearing man to bring him pot, something Martin said made no sense since Taylor had claimed he’d been with a friend buying weed that night and had refused to provide investigators a name.

The prosecutor described Taylor as a hunter looking for prey. “She was seized and detained by him as soon as she got on that property like a deer hunter,” said Martin. “The one thing that could have saved her was her cell phone.” FBI experts testified that the last activity on Murphy’s phone came at 7:17pm, and it was found smashed August 13 near Taylor’s camper.

“The biggest problem in [Taylor’s] story—and it is a story—is that she left alone and was fine,” said Martin. “Is it reasonable to leave without her hair extension, her nail, her blood and cell phone?”

Martin reminded the jury it was not necessary to produce Murphy’s body for a homicide conviction, and repeatedly used the word “child” to describe Murphy. “He wants you to reward him for disposing of the body,” said Martin.

In his hour-long closing argument, defense attorney Hallahan stressed, “There’s no proof or evidence of her death,” and insisted police got the wrong man when there was “clear evidence” of a third party, according to Taylor’s account.

Hallahan cited Murphy’s father and grandmother, who testified she would not have gone to a strange man’s home by herself. And he said Murphy clearly had plans that Saturday night beyond going to Lynchburg to buy hair extensions.

A clerk at Ultimate Bliss had testified that Taylor purchased two porn videos around 5pm that day. “At 5 o’clock, abduction or killing was the furthest thing from his mind,” said Hallahan.

He also questioned testimony from the cashiers at the Liberty gas station who said they were “creeped out” by Taylor but had never called police.

A bartender at Applebee’s said Taylor showed up sweaty on the same night Murphy’s car turned up at the Carmike. “It’s the hottest part of the summer,” said Hallahan, and noted that the Carmike parking lot was closer to Kid to Kid, where Murphy worked, than Applebee’s. He also wondered why, with the extensive FBI viewing of surveillance video, none turned up showing Taylor walking to Applebee’s.

Hallahan reminded the jury that an extensive FBI search of Taylor’s tiny camper on August 7 did not turn up the bloodied t-shirt he wore the night Murphy disappeared. “If he succeeded in getting rid of her and the clothes and the car, why would he bring it back?” said Hallahan. “Keep thinking about how the shirt and the phone magically appeared after those searches.”

Murphy’s cell phone was discovered August 13 in a briary patch about 70 feet from Taylor’s camper when cell phone-sniffing dogs were brought in after other searches failed to find it.

The defense criticized the FBI agent who testified tire marks of a mid-sized car were found behind an abandoned house near the camper, yet never measured the marks, which Hallahan suggested could have come from the ATV Taylor’s son was riding August 5.

“There’s no evidence tying Alexis Murphy to [Taylor’s] Suburban or his four-wheel drive,” said Hallahan. “That’s beyond reasonable doubt. That’s not guilty.”

Hallahan posited some alternative theories about what happened to Murphy. “What if someone paid him $10,000 to kidnap and sell her overseas?” he asked.

He pointed out Taylor bore no injuries indicating a violent struggle at the time of his arrest, and suggested there could have been no abduction because Murphy followed Taylor to his home.

“You’re going to find there’s not enough beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Hallahan. “You may not like him, but that’s not enough to convict him.”

In his rebuttal, Commonwealth’s Attorney Martin grabbed the stack of evidence envelopes containing Murphy’s hair, torn fingernail, diamond stud, broken cell phone, and Taylor’s t-shirt with Murphy’s blood.

“This stuff doesn’t lie,” said Martin, who produced a chart titled, “Randy Taylor’s Lies,” and another called, “Why Randy Taylor Is Guilty.”

In a dramatic finale, Martin silently opened one of the evidence bags, put on gloves, and held up Taylor’s T-shirt and Murphy’s hair extension. “No abduction? No murder?” said the prosecutor, citing the adage “evil triumphs when people do nothing.”

“Don’t let evil triumph,” he concluded.

The jury begins deliberation May 8.

Correction: The original post misquoted the inmate’s account of what Taylor allegedly said. Taylor used the words “my way” not “nine ways.”

A week after 17-year-old Alexis Murphy was last seen at the Liberty gas station in Lovingston and her DNA had been found in his camper, Randy Taylor finally admitted Murphy had been at his property on August 3, the evening she disappeared, and claimed she was with a black man with cornrows who’d been driving a maroon Chevrolet Caprice and who sold him some marijuana.

Dameon Malcolm Bradley testified Tuesday afternoon, May 6, in Nelson County Circuit Court, where Taylor is on trial for the murder and abduction with intent to defile of Murphy, whose body has never been found.

Bradley testified that he moved to Birmingham, Alabama, shortly after Murphy disappeared last summer, and he was surprised when he received a phone call from police after her disappearance because he didn’t know her well, although he was dating her cousin. “Me and Alexis never did anything together or rode in a car together,” he told the jury. He graduated in 2007—seven years before the missing senior would have graduated—and  said he and Murphy were acquainted through Facebook.

Bradley said he spent the weekend Murphy disappeared in a motel in Madison Heights with his girlfriend, and the couple had no car that weekend. His mother picked him up Sunday morning, August 4, and he left a week later to move to Birmingham. He denied ever being in Taylor’s camper or selling him marijuana.

Although Bradley testified for the prosecution, court-appointed defense attorney Michael Hallahan had subpoenaed him as a hostile witness. Hallahan showed a picture of the now short-cropped witness with cornrows, and asked him about his hair. “I had them last August, and just cut them off two weeks ago,” said Bradley, who had also worked at the McDonald’s at the Liberty gas station, a spot Taylor was known to frequent.

Bradley said he knew no one with a maroon Chevy Caprice.

“Well, we blew that smoking gun out of the water,” said Murphy’s great aunt, Trina Murphy, after the day’s court session. “He’s not involved. Everybody—the media, the public—was waiting for Dameon Bradley. Now he can move on with his life.”

The trial began with more recordings of the interviews Taylor had with Nelson Sheriff’s Office investigator William Mays and the FBI’s John Pittman, continuing an August 7 conversation at Taylor’s residence off U.S. 29 about a mile north of Lovingston in which Mays told Taylor they knew he had been in Charlottesville that weekend. Taylor repeatedly had said he stayed home after spending Saturday, August 3, four-wheeling in Barboursville.

The car Murphy was driving, a white Nissan Maxima, had been found at the Carmike Theatre parking lot the day before the August 7 interview, and surveillance video showed the car pulling into the lot around 10pm Sunday night, August 4, although the car’s occupants weren’t visible.

‘We’re certain you went back to Charlottesville,” said Mays on the interview tape, with the sounds of U.S. 29 traffic in the background. “I don’t think we’re going to have a problem proving it.”

After multiple denials, Taylor said, “If you guys want to arrest me, fine. I did not go back to Charlottesville.” He then claimed that a friend, the same one he said he’d been with Saturday night to buy pot, came by his camper on Sunday with a plan to sell some pot in Earlysville. Taylor rode with him, he told investigators, and the friend dropped him off at Applebee’s, where he recalled having two Heinekens before calling a cab to take him back to Nelson County. He repeatedly refused to give investigators the friend’s name.

By Sunday, August 11, police had confirmed that the hair, a torn fingernail, and diamond stud found in Taylor’s camper matched Murphy’s DNA. Mays and Pittman returned to the camper that day, and conducted a third interview with an agitated Taylor, who complained that his camper was in disarray following an August 7 search.

The investigators told Taylor they knew much of what he’d told them wasn’t true, and tried to cajole him to tell them what happened. “Something bad happened here Saturday,” said Mays. “I think you’re afraid to tell us because we’ll perceive you as a monster.”

Mays urged Taylor to think of his son—three years younger than Murphy. “If this were your son, you’d want that person to tell,”  he said. At that point, the investigators tell him they have evidence that Murphy’s phone was there on his property, and that they’d found evidence—one of Murphy’s hairs—that she was there.

Taylor said he wanted to see his son, according to Mays. The son and the son’s mother, Taylor’s ex-girlfriend whose mother owns the property where Taylor lived, came and picked up an ATV Taylor had bought for his son, Pittman testified. Afterward, the investigators expected Taylor to tell them what happened to Murphy to give her family closure, said Pittman.

Instead, Taylor admitted Murphy was in his camper and described the previously unmentioned man with cornrows driving a maroon Chevy Caprice. “We  smoked a little weed,” said Taylor on the recording. “I got some beer.”

On the tape, the investigators express surprise that a pot dealer would come to the residence of someone he didn’t know, and that Taylor, a man who had a surveillance camera on the camper, would leave Murphy and the man alone in his camper while he went to get beer.

And although Taylor had told police several times on the interview tapes that he wasn’t good with time, he knew exactly how long Murphy and the mystery man had been there. “They were here for over an hour,” he said.

Taylor was arrested that day after Mays and Pittman spent seven hours talking to him. And after he’d locked the camper, FBI investigators executed a second search and found the T-shirt he was wearing in an August 3 surveillance video from the Liberty, balled up under the sofa.

Wendell Cosenza, an FBI expert on cell phone records, testified that the last activity on Murphy’s iPhone—which was found by a canine officer in dense undergrowth about 70 feet from Taylor’s camper, according to testimony— happened at 7:36pm August 3. “And then the phone went silent,” said Consenza.

He also explained cell tower records that put Murphy’s phone in the vicinity of Taylor’s camper at 10506 Thomas Nelson Highway.

FBI electronic engineer Dustin Simerly had examined the phone and cited “extensive damage.” The back of the phone was smashed off, the battery was missing, the battery cables were pulled out, and the processor was cracked, making it impossible to retrieve any information off the phone, he said.

Murphy’s battered phone was shown to the jury in a moment that Trina Murphy would later describe as “emotional and disturbing.”

“It was something Alexis kept with her all the time,” she said. “It clearly speaks to the fact she never left there. She never would have left without that phone.”

Commonwealth’s Attorney Anthony Martin introduced a scrapbook of photos found in an abandoned house behind Taylor’s camper. He’d attempted to introduce the photos the previous day, claiming they supported the “intent to defile” portion of the abduction charge. Hallahan had objected at that point, and Judge Michael Gamble had refused to admit them May 5, but had a change of heart the next morning.

“The photos are of women in various glamour shots,” said the FBI’s Jon Cromer. Some of the photos had been altered with the face of a young woman pasted on top of other women’s bodies. The woman whose face is depicted is the daughter of the owner of the automobile dealership in Ruckersville where Taylor worked, said Cromer.

Defense attorney Hallahan pointed out that the girls in the scrapbook were white and that it was found in the abandoned house, not in Taylor’s residence. Cromer was unable to say whether fingerprints had been found on the scrapbook.

“I think it speaks to this man’s integrity and fascination with young women,” said Trina Murphy at the end of the court day.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Martin said he expects to call one or two more witnesses tomorrow, May 7, and the prosecution is expected to rest its case.

Day 3: Randy Taylor denies seeing Alexis Murphy in police interviews

Day 2: Alexis Murphy’s blood found, defense pushes human trafficking

Day 1: Jury Selection in Randy Allen Taylor trial

On the second day of the murder trial of Randy Allen Taylor, Commonwealth’s Attorney Anthony Martin’s 40-minute opening statement laid out his case against Taylor, accused of slaying 17-year-old Alexis Murphy, who was last seen on August 3 at the Liberty gas station in Lovingston. Martin detailed the physical evidence found in Taylor’s camper—Murphy’s blood, torn fingernail, and hair with roots attached—and connected Taylor to Murphy’s car found in the Carmike Theatre parking lot, while defense attorney Michael Hallahan stressed to the jury, “There’s way too much reasonable doubt.”

Testimony began with Murphy’s family members. Her mother, Laura Murphy, wearing a pink ribbon, described a happy teenager about to enter her senior year of high school as co-captain of the volleyball team, who had just gotten a raise at her job at Kid to Kid in Charlottesville, and was off the evening of August 3  to buy hair extensions in Lynchburg for her upcoming class photograph. Alexis was “never, never” without her iPhone4 and was “obsessed with her hair,” said her mother, who became emotional on the stand several times.

“That was the last day I saw my daughter,” she said.

Alexis and her mother lived with Alexis’ grandmother, Gayle Taylor, in Shipman. Gayle Taylor, not related to the defendant, also testified about Murphy’s excitement about getting new hair extensions in Lynchburg. She said she told Alexis to take a house key that night, even though her granddaughter said she’d be home before Taylor went to bed around 10:30pm. She also called Alexis “a scared kind of person” who always called several times when she was on her way home because she was afraid to walk from the car into the house in the dark.

The grandmother left a light on for Alexis. “When I woke up at 1:20, I knew something was wrong because that light was still on,” she said.

Martin also asked family members, the volleyball coach, and her employer at Kid to Kid whether they’d heard from her over the past 10 months. No, replied the first six witnesses.

Randy Taylor told investigators he spent August 3 four-wheeling in Orange and arrived home around 9pm, said Martin. A video taken on August 3 at 5:21pm from adult sex shop Ultimate Bliss on Angus Road in Charlottesville showed Taylor going into the store. A store employee testified he bought two videos: “A Doll’s House” and “Mexican Pussy.”

Two employees at Liberty gas station said Taylor was a regular customer who usually bought Pall Mall Reds shorts and beer, and who would park his camouflaged Suburban in the parking lot for hours. Taylor would “gawk” at the teenaged girls who came into the station after school, said assistant manager Tammy Hitt.

“He’d sit there for hours watching everybody,” said Melissa Jarrell, who was working August 3 and saw both Murphy and Taylor at the station around 7pm. “He was the last person you’d want to be alone with”

Jarrell said she watched Murphy walk across the Liberty parking lot. “I saw her turn her head as if someone spoke to her, then she walked over to [Taylor’s] car and they talked.”

Video from the gas station entered as evidence showed Taylor, wearing a blue t-shirt with a Miller Lite logo, hold the door for Murphy as she entered the store and he left. Another clip showed Taylor’s Suburban headed north on U.S. 29 followed by the Nissan Maxima Murphy was driving that night.

Some of the female FBI agents who searched Taylor’s camper August 6 also were “uncomfortable” with his “very intense stare,” said Special Agent Britney Wampler, who discovered the fingernail, hair, and stud later identified through DNA analysis as belonging to Murphy.

Wampler also said she observed matted grass behind an abandoned house on the property where Taylor lived with tire marks that “looked like a vehicle low to the ground,” unlike Taylor’s larger SUV. Grass and mud were later found under Murphy’s Nissan Maxima.

Agents were there for six hours August 7 conducting a thorough search of the camper that included turning over the sofa, bed, and chair and going through every piece of clothing.

And yet, pointed out defense attorney Hallahan, they didn’t find Taylor’s balled-up Miller Lite t-shirt with Murphy’s blood, false eyelash, and hair under the sofa, which was discovered after Taylor had been arrested. “What I submit is that Wednesday [August 7] the shirt and hair weren’t there,” said Hallahan.

It’s long been a mystery how the white Nissan Maxima Murphy was driving ended up in the Carmike Theater parking lot, where it was discovered Tuesday, August 6.

Martin entered surveillance video from the Armed Forces recruiting station that showed the Nissan appear in the Carmike lot around 10pm Sunday, August 4. “Interestingly,” said prosecutor Martin, “the defendant shows up at Applebee’s restaurant within walking distance.”

Bartender Jerry Madison Jr. testified that a “sweating” Taylor showed up at Applebee’s after 10pm that night, ordered two Heinekens, and asked for a cab. “He said his buddy was passed out outside,” said Madison. “I never saw anybody.”

Nor did cab driver John Statt, who said he drove Taylor to Woods Mill, about three miles north of Taylor’s camper.

The last of 18 witnesses was James Melia with the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Response Team. Hallahan asked him about human trafficking, to which the prosecution objected and which the judge sustained. After the jury left for the day, Melia said he’s never had a case of abduction where the person was trafficked.

“I want trafficking in,” said Taylor’s attorney.

Hallahan also asked witnesses whether Murphy would have gone to Taylor’s house alone, suggesting that she was with someone else who was the real killer. And he urged the jurors not to be swayed by the emotion of a promising young woman who disappeared or her grief-stricken family. “You can’t convict [Taylor] on a hunch, probability or suspicion,” said Hallahan.

After court was adjourned for the day, family spokesperson Trina Murphy said, “I’ve always said he is a predator.” And after hearing the day’s evidence, “It’s difficult to think about what [Alexis’] last moments were like.”

For two days in court Trina Murphy has sat within feet of her niece’s accused killer. “I want him to look at me,” she said. “He needs to see the suffering we’ve had the past 10 months and tell us where Alexis is.”

The trial resumes Monday.

 

 

 

 

After former Food Lion manager Mark Weiner was convicted of abduction with intent to defile last May, his attorney alleged in court that the prosecutor kept out cell phone records that would have cleared his client. Weiner’s new attorney has gone further, contending in a new motion filed April 14 that the alleged victim fabricated the abduction to provoke her boyfriend, and pointing a finger at both prosecutorial misconduct and defense attorney errors that did, a motion alleges, result in a jury recommending Weiner serve 20 years.

“Mark Weiner was convicted of a crime that never occurred,” said the motion to set aside the jury verdict, which was filed by Richmond attorney Steve Benjamin in Albemarle County Circuit Court.

In addition to accusing Chelsea Steiniger of lying about being drugged, abducted, and taken to an abandoned house on Richmond Road, the motion takes aim at Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford, alleging prosecutorial misconduct for allowing Steiniger to testify when Lunsford had phone records that contradicted her story, and for refusing to allow the jury to hear this exculpatory evidence.

“The Commonwealth’s intentional efforts to keep the cell phone information from the jury were improper and prejudiced Mark Weiner’s rights to cross-examination, depriving him of a fair trial,” said the court document, which refers to Brady v. Maryland, a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the prosecution’s suppression of evidence favorable to the accused violates due process.

“The police–and prosecutor–knew that the cell phone records showed that Chelsea called her boyfriend multiple times and received the 911 dispatcher’s message when she claimed that her phone was ‘dead,’” said the filing. “They also knew that the cell tower location information showed that Chelsea was never in the area of 2184 Richmond Road.”

At posting time, the prosecution had not yet filed a response to the motion, and Lunsford did not return C-VILLE’s call. However, in an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, she disagreed that Steiniger lied and disputed the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. “And I don’t agree with the interpretation of the phone records that has been presented by the defense,” she told the Times-Dispatch. “I believe (the defense) either misunderstands or misrepresents those phone records.”

The case began December 12, 2012, when Weiner, 54, offered then 20-year-old Chelsea Steiniger a ride home around 11:30pm from the Lucky Seven convenience store on Market Street on a bitter winter night after her boyfriend refused to let her stay at his Grady Avenue apartment, according to the motion.

In Weiner’s trial last May, Steiniger testified that Weiner put a cloth over her face that immediately knocked her out. She said she later awoke in an abandoned house in Shadwell, escaped with her phone by jumping out of a second-story window, hid in the woods from her abductor, and walked home.

“Pure fiction,” said Benjamin in the motion, which alleges Weiner dropped Steiniger off safely at her mother’s Carriage Hill apartment on Pantops and that she even gave him her phone number. She was already at home when she began texting her boyfriend that she’d been abducted and refused to answer his calls, said the court filing.

According to the motion, Steiniger sent taunting texts to her beau pretending to be the alleged abductor. “Shes so sexy when shes passed out,” reads one of the texts entered as an exhibit supporting the motion. After her alleged escape, she claimed her cell phone battery died. But the motion asserts she deliberately turned off her phone when she realized her boyfriend had called 911 and after she received and listened to a voicemail from the Emergency Communications Center.

“Chelsea continued her fraudulent scheme, ultimately perpetuating it on this Court,” said the motion. “To do this, Chelsea had to explain how the abductor texted from a phone she still had; how she was abducted without a struggle, injuries, or restraints; and why she never called 911.”

Police obtained Steiniger’s cell phone records from AT&T, which showed that her phone was working during a period in which she said the battery had died, and indicated she spoke to her boyfriend three times and listened to a message from the ECC an hour earlier than she testified she’d received it, said the court filing.

Records show that Steiniger’s phone accessed two AT&T cell towers near her mother’s apartment dozens of times that night and never accessed the AT&T cell tower closest to the abandoned house, said the motion, which noted Weiner’s defense attorney, Ford Childress, never saw the records until after the jury began deliberations.

“The cell phone records prove that Chelsea Steiniger committed perjury by testifying that on December 13, 2012, (1) she was at 2184 Richmond Road; and (2) her phone “died” minutes after she had entered the woods around 12:51 a.m.,” said the motion to set aside the jury’s verdict.

 The motion also challenges Steiniger’s story that Weiner put a cloth over her face that rendered her unconscious within 10 to 15 seconds with an affidavit from anesthesiologist John R. Janes Jr., who stated, “I know of no volatile anesthetic which will render an adult female completely unconscious in 10-15 seconds.”

Weiner also claimed that Steiniger gave him her phone number, which he wrote on a matchbook. When police searched his van, they found multiple matchbooks but did not collect any. After the vehicle was released, Weiner’s attorney found the matchbook with the number, but did not enter it into evidence, resulting in “ineffective assistance of counsel,” according to court documents. “That circumstance not only supports Mark Weiner’s testimony and his innocence, it is independent evidence that Chelsea was neither rendered unconscious nor abducted,” said the motion.

Weiner also cites Steiniger’s recorded phone conversations with her husband, Howard Steiniger, who was incarcerated at Dillwyn Correctional Institution, in which her story about what happened that night changed. According to the motion, “She explained that the entire event had been an ‘elaborate scam to piss off a man that had gone horribly wrong.’ The man was a guy named ‘Mike’ and the scam was to falsely claim that a man had tried to kidnap her. She claimed she was just trying to ‘piss this Mike guy off.’” The court filing names Michael Mills as Steiniger’s boyfriend, and, says Childress, who did not return a phone call requesting comment for this story, erred in not calling him as a witness.

 Further, Weiner’s filing alleges Steiniger told Mills she’d lied about the abduction because Mills texted, “why did u lie to me…” Mills declined to comment.

 “[Steiniger’s] story was pure fiction and an affront to common sense,” blasted the motion. Reached by phone, Steiniger said, “I have no comment.”

 Weiner’s attorney Steve Benjamin, recently the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, also declined to comment on the motion.

 “He’s a powerhouse,” said John Whitehead, president of the civil liberties-defending Rutherford Institute. “If I got in trouble, he’s the guy I’d want representing me.”

 Such a filing claiming perjury by the victim, prosecutorial misconduct, and defense attorney error, is “very rare,” said Whitehead. “He raises some significant questions about justice in this motion.”

 Whitehead described Benjamin as “very meticulous,” and said, “The thing about Benjamin, if he takes a case, you have to take it seriously because he’s so well-respected. He’s a Clarence Darrow type.”

 Weiner has been held at the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail since December 14, 2012. On April 30, the day he is scheduled to be formally sentenced, Benjamin will argue that Weiner’s guilty verdict be set aside, and an acquittal be entered.

Read the full motion here.

Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding has always approached his work as a cop through his background as a social worker and through his Baptist faith. But after a four-decade law enforcement career that includes nearly 30 years putting criminals behind bars as a Charlottesville Police Department investigator, he had a come-to-Jesus moment reading John Grisham’s The Innocent Man. The true story of a once major-league baseball player named Ron Williamson who spent 11 years on death row for a brutal Oklahoma rape and murder before being cleared by DNA evidence hit Harding like a punch to the stomach.

“It embarrassed me, that I’m part of law enforcement that did that,” he said.

Last month, Harding sent a rallying letter to the 123 sheriffs and 247 police chiefs in Virginia asking for their support in forming a justice commission to help prevent wrongful convictions like Williamson’s in the Commonwealth.

“I think we can change practices to lessen the likelihood of convicting the innocent while strengthening our chances of convicting the actual offender,” Harding wrote. “If police chiefs and sheriffs were to propose and or support reform—we would be taken seriously.”

Innocents, lost

That Harding would be the one leading the charge to overhaul the criminal justice system, one known for its resistance to change, shouldn’t come as a surprise. He’s long been on the cutting edge of investigative work as the guy who pushed for the General Assembly to fund Virginia’s DNA databank in the 1990s. And while he aggressively—and successfully—pursued hundreds of felony cases during his years as a detective, he also serves as the vice chair of the Good News Jail and Prison Ministry, which provides Bible classes and counseling services to inmates at the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.

Realizing he was part of a system that put innocent people behind bars—or worse, to death—was “humbling and shameful,” Harding said. “And it induced a rage. From there I started wondering how often that was going on.”

Here’s a hint at how often: Nationwide, 1,342 people have been exonerated, often after spending decades in jail, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a joint effort of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University law schools. In Virginia, 36 people have been cleared of committing heinous crimes, 17 of those thanks to DNA evidence.

“That’s not even the tip of the iceberg,” said Harding, who went on to read UVA law professor Brandon Garrett’s Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong, an examination of the first 250 people exonerated by DNA.

“That really rocked me,” said Harding. In 70 percent of the cases Garrett examined, DNA not only exonerated an innocent person, but it pointed to the person who committed the crime.

“Serial offenders kept raping and murdering while an innocent person was in prison,” Harding said.

And then Harding got involved in the Michael Hash case, one of three wrongful convictions that Culpeper has the dubious distinction of claiming, according to the National Registry. In 2001, Hash, then 19 years old, was convicted for the 1996 murder of 74-year-old Thelma Scoggins. He spent nearly 12 years in prison before a federal judge vacated his capital conviction in 2012, citing “outrageous misconduct” by the prosecution and investigators that included sending Hash to spend two nights with a serial snitch, according to Judge James Turk’s 64-page decision, which called it a conviction “brought about by methods that offend a sense of justice.”

The snitch, Paul Carter, who’d been a state’s witness 20 times, testified that Hash had confessed to him about the murder, according to Turk’s decision, and Culpeper Commonwealth’s Attorney Gary Close, in his closing argument, denied that Carter had a deal for his testimony, which Close later admitted was “misleading,” noted the judge.

Close, who resigned after Hash’s conviction was overturned, is named in Hash’s civil suit, along with Culpeper Sheriff Scott Jenkins, who was an investigator with no experience in capital cases, according to court documents. Two other investigators, the former Culpeper chief jailer, and Carter are also named in the lawsuit, which is scheduled for a jury trial in November.

Harding spent a year and a half assisting a retired FBI agent working for Hash’s pro-bono attorneys, and he felt the emotional impact of that work in March 2012.

“I go to the penitentiary and watch Michael Hash walk out with a box of his belongings where he thought he’d be for the rest of his life,” said Harding.

Another poignant moment came as he sat in court with Hash’s family five months later when a Fairfax prosecutor acknowledged there was no evidence to retry Hash and dropped the charges.

“Over a decade in the penitentiary and that’s all you get—‘Case nolle prossed. Next case,’” said Harding, who’s also bothered by something else: In all the cases in which prosecutors intentionally withheld exculpatory evidence or investigators falsified evidence, the number who have been held accountable and spent at least one night in jail? “Zero,” said Harding.

Good intentions, big mistakes

While the judge’s decision paints the Hash case as the most egregious type of wrongful conviction—that in which investigators and prosecutors are accused of deliberately obfuscating, even in the face of evidence that might exonerate the accused—Harding says the vast majority of wrongful convictions come about not from gross misconduct on the part of law enforcement but from mistakes by well-intentioned investigators.

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions, according to the Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization that seeks to overturn wrongful convictions. Harding has looked at research on best investigative methods for photo line-ups, and realized, “Some of the things I did were wrong.” While he doesn’t think he helped convict anyone who was innocent, he now sees how investigators can influence witnesses in dangerous ways.

He uses the example of a woman who’s been raped. Police identify a suspect, and the detective asks the victim to come in and look at some pictures. “Automatically the victim is feeling, I need to help the police,” explained Harding.

In the past, witnesses were shown six photos at a time. Harding admits he’d group the photo of the suspect with five photos of potential perpetrators who didn’t look like the suspect, then give instructions to the witness. “I’d say, ‘I’m required to tell you the suspect may not be in these pictures,’” he recalled. “They’d hear, ‘I’m required to say that.’”

When a witness claimed to recognize the suspect in the photo, Harding said, his reaction could have reinforced a misidentification. “I might be showing excitement on my face,” he acknowledged. He and other investigators might have gone further than a smile or facial expression following a positive ID. “Then I may high-five the other investigators and say, ‘We got him,’” he recalled. “That sealed the deal in the victim’s brain.”

When that rape victim he described is later asked to identify her attacker after seeing the police photos, she has a clear image of the person she now believes is her assailant. “She says, ‘That face is burned in my brain,’” said Harding. But in fact, the face she’s picturing may not be that of her attacker.

UVA law’s Garrett worked with the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) to develop best practices for photo line-ups that call for “blind” administrators who know nothing about the suspect, and advise showing photos sequentially rather than six at time—a practice other researchers challenge—and to put the photos in folders so the administrator doesn’t know which photo the witness is viewing and can’t influence the identification.

Despite issuing those best practices in conjunction with the DCJS, in a follow-up survey, Garrett found that most law enforcement agencies in Virginia have not adopted them. “It seems for some agencies best practices are not a priority,” he said.

That’s why he’s excited about Harding’s plan to put the state’s most experienced law enforcement minds together—police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, researchers, and defense lawyers. “Stakeholders can make it more successful,” said Garrett.

Interrogations are another area that can lead to false confessions and wrongful convictions. Best practices also call for recording interrogations, and while that might seem like a simple and sensible policy that would allow interrogations and confessions to be reviewed objectively after the fact, some agencies still resist. That means questionable interrogation techniques may be used, and the only witness is the accused.

Harding remembers being a young detective working with an older investigator. “He would grab tables and turn them over, and start screaming if the guy wouldn’t confess,” he recounted. “Some suspects would even urinate on themselves.”

A widely used process for police interviewing and interrogation was developed by a Chicago-based organization called John Reid & Associates, which also publishes a textbook on the subject. Harding went to a Reid seminar, and he learned to avoid profanity during interrogations, to make sure suspects were advised of their rights, and to videotape everything. “When I became a supervisor, I sent everyone there,” he said.

Now, Harding’s hoping to help promote ethical and effective interrogation practices across the state, and he says the response from sheriffs and police chiefs to his March 12 letter has been positive.

“Certainly I support anything we can do to improve the criminal justice system, make us more accountable and more transparent,” said Brunswick County Sheriff Brian Roberts, vice chair of the Virginia Law Enforcement Accreditation Commission (Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo is its chair). He pointed out that only 89 out of 385 agencies in Virginia have received accreditation, a voluntary process that requires departments to show compliance with 200 standards, according to Harding, who notes that it can be especially burdensome for smaller agencies. Charlottesville and Albemarle police departments are accredited, as is the Albemarle Sheriff’s Office; the Charlottesville Sheriff’s Office is not, but Sheriff James Brown says it’s something he’s considering.

The challenge, Roberts says, is to find the shoe that fits both large departments like Fairfax County, and the smaller, rural departments, such as the one-man office under him in Brodnax.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to raise the bar on wrongful convictions,” said Roberts, “ but I don’t think the answer is a knee-jerk General Assembly mandate.”

There are a number of ways a commission could be convened besides the legislature, says Harding: Through law enforcement organizations, the Supreme Court of Virginia, or the attorney general—Harding met with AG Mark Herring and Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran, and says both seem supportive.

In a phone interview, Moran expressed support for “anything that improves our criminal justice system and the arrest and imprisonment of criminals.” He also likes Harding’s efforts to involve the stakeholders. “What Sheriff Harding proposed can’t be from the top down,” said Moran. “There needs to be a sharing of information and buy-in.”

Brandon Garrett notes that other states have justice commissions and that in North Carolina, by the time the legislature mandated line-up procedures, they already were firmly in place—voluntarily—by most state law enforcement agencies.

In early April, Harding reached out to the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys, which, it turns out, has formed its own subcommittee to look at the issue. “We are launching our own best practices with an eye toward addressing the avoidance of wrongful convictions,” said Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney Theo Stamos. She said Albemarle prosecutor Denise Lunsford is the committee’s co-chair.

The prosecutors don’t necessarily agree with law enforcement on what constitutes a best practice. For example, the movement toward sequential rather than simultaneous photo line-ups may not be the best way, said Stamos, citing conflicting research. Still, she welcomes the input of sheriffs and police chiefs. “The more the merrier,” she said.

And contrary to the perception some may have that prosecutors and law enforcement want a conviction at any cost, she calls wrongful convictions “a failure of the system” and cites an old adage from law school: “It’s better to have 100 guilty men go free than to have the wrongful conviction of one innocent man.”

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman agrees on the importance of avoiding wrongful convictions. “Many lives have been disrupted, harmed, and ruined,” he said. “People’s lives have been taken.”

But while Chapman commends Harding’s efforts, he says he wants to know more about the justice commission proposal. “I wonder if the appropriate agency is already in place,” he said, pointing to the Department of Criminal Justice Services and its accreditation of police departments.

Undoing damage done

Others feel Harding is not going far enough. Attorney Steve Rosenfield is concerned about those wrongfully convicted who currently are in prison and how difficult it is to get them released—especially if there is no DNA evidence.

For years Rosenfield has maintained that his client, Robert Davis, was the victim of a false confession made during a middle-of-the-night interrogation by Albemarle police. That claim is supported by the Northwestern Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, whose co-director Laura Nirider watched the police videotape of the interrogation and reported she saw officers tell Davis that his DNA was found at the scene-—something she said is not true—and repeatedly threaten him with the death penalty. She described it as “one of the most coercive interrogations I have ever seen.”

Davis, then 18 years old, was convicted in the 2003 Crozet murders of Nola Charles and her 3-year-old son. He entered an Alford plea, which doesn’t admit guilt but acknowledges there’s enough evidence to convict him, based on his allegedly coerced confession and the statements of two siblings convicted in the slayings who had implicated him. Both Rocky Fugett and Jessica Fugett, in sworn affidavits, have since recanted their allegations that Davis was involved, and Rosenfield sent a clemency petition to the governor more than a year ago. Nonetheless, Davis, now 29, has languished in prison for 11 years, nearly half of his 23-year sentence.

“It’s almost impossible to win a writ of actual innocence in court,” said Rosenfield. “The present statute only gives one chance to bring a writ of actual innocence, and it’s only available to people who plead innocent, when we know a lot of innocent people plead guilty.”

Nationally, says Rosenfield, 2 to 5 percent of those in prison are thought to be innocent. While he’d like to see a justice commission weed out the innocent people currently in Virginia’s prisons, he applauds Harding’s efforts to prevent future wrongful convictions.

“Harding has tremendous credentials, having been a probation officer, a line police officer, a detective, and having served on state and federal task forces,” said Rosenfield. “The feather in his hat is his work with Michael Hash. And finally, he’s a Republican. That has a little bit more oomph than when Democrats talk about justice.”

Harding hopes that his counterparts at law enforcement agencies across the state will feel distressed enough by the notion that innocent people are serving time for crimes they didn’t commit that they’ll take action. And to motivate his fellow law enforcers, he bought 80 copies of Garrett’s book at his own expense and he’s offering free copies to those who promise to read Convicting the Innocent.

He contrasts the aviation industry’s vigorous investigation of every crashed plane with the criminal justice system’s less aggressive approach to wrongful convictions.

“These are our plane crashes,” he said. “We need to look at what we did wrong and learn from it.”